"Never fear my Boys, we'll all go to hell together."
The crew hadjust time to leapoverboard,
accompanyingit with a most dreadfulyell.
The cries ofthe men drowningin the waterwas
atfirst awful in the extreme; but as they sunk,
and becamefaint, it died away by degrees.
--
GEORGE HAMILTON, SHIP'S SURGEON
FAINTLY, across nearly two centu
ries and through one hundred feet of
seawater, the cries echo in my ears,
attenuated and distant like voices in
a dream, until they fade and die in the tin
kling bubbles of my breathing. I am sinking
slowly, bathed in steel blue light, toward the
silent seabed that received those drowning
sailors of long ago.
Beneath me a dark arm of iron material
izes in the blue. At 110 feet I bump gently on
the bottom, raising puffs of silver sand.
Small fish turn and flash like burnished
pewter in the pearlescent light. I hook one
arm round the gigantic fluke of a buried
anchor to hold against the tugging cur
rent. Strewn along the seafloor, the dark
shapes of anchors, guns, chain pump wheel,
and other ship fittings recede into the glow
of distance.
I am embracing a piece of history, the
wreckage of H.M.S. Pandora, 24 guns,
Captain Edwards, lost on Australia's Great
Barrier Reef on 29th August, 1791. She took
with her to the bottom 35 men, four of whom
had lived through the most celebrated sea
story in history, the mutiny and piratical sei
zure of His Majesty's Armed Vessel Bounty.
For more than three decades I have lived
with the Bounty story. My fascination with
that turbulent tale has continued to grow
from the moment I found the remains of the
Bounty off Pitcairn Island in 1957.
Now, by a turn of fortune, when I touch
the remains of the vessel sent to capture the
mutineers, I am the first to lay hands on both
sunken ships of that tragic story.
Pandora found only the mutineers who
were foolish enough to remain on Tahiti.
Leap for life will end in death for some
manacledmutineers scramblingfrom
"Pandora'sBox," theirprison on the
quarterdeck,as the ship takes her last
heel. Ten prisonerssurvived.
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